October 23, 2010, an open house was held at the Halifax CBC Nova Scotia building. The open house event invited the public to visit the building and view the people and equipment used in the production of programs such as the local news and This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

While visiting the weather reporting area, I noticed the computers used by meteorologist Peter Coade were using what appeared to be a distribution of Linux. Speaking to Mr. Coade, he confirmed that the computers he uses to produce the weather prediction animations and data for the daily news broadcasts are in fact Linux setups. He was unsure of the specific distribution, but did know that the system was produced by the Boston based company WSI. He also said that the system was one of the best meteorological media production systems he has used.

From what I saw, it appears that CBC Nova Scotia uses the WSI TruVu Titan 3.0 system to produce it’s weather data and animations. Researching online, it could be that the software may be running on a version of the CentOS Linux distribution with the ICEWM windows manager.

Below are photos of the desktops and a video of Peter Coade talking about his system setup with the visitors.

Open Source Geospatial tools will be discussed at the first OSGEO Atlantic Chapter meeting on October 28.

Open Source Geospatial tool users in the Atlantic provinces are invited to attend the very first OSGEO Atlantic Chapter meeting. The meeting will be held at the CARIS office near the Delta Fredericton in Fredericton, New Brunswick, October 28, 2010. The one hour long meeting will be held within the larger Geomatics Atlantic conference from noon to one pm. The OSGEO Atlantic Chapter members will use the hour to discuss the new chapter’s mission and objectives as well as desginate people to chapter positions. Everyone with an interest in open source geospaptial tools are invited to attend.

A CloudCamp conference will take place in Halifax to discuss the emerging field of cloud computing.

On Novermber 1st, 2010, A CloudCamp conference will be taking place at the World Trade and Convention Center in Halifax, Nova Scotia. CouldCamp is “an unconference where early adopters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas.” The conference is not vendor specific and covers propriety and open source cloud computing related products. In particular, Shawn Duggan will be giving a talk on his experiences migrating an open source application into a cloud computing environment. Everyone from end users to IT professionals are invited to attend and participate.

Mike Lovell of tintedGreen Technologies is deomonstrating his prototype virtual desktop all-in-one box tentatively called greenBox at the Atlantic Eco-Expo this weekend in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The system will be a complete virtulization solution, ready out of the box to stream and distribute virtual Windows and Linux desktops to PC’s on the client’s network, using Ubuntu Linux and Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP). The system was covered in a previous posting.

Below is a video of Lovell discussing the system with an attendee at the expo.

Developed with environmentally minded technology consultant company tintedGreen Technologies, the project uses a Linux Terminal Server Project server to broadcast virtual desktops to older PC’s at the Lake Echo CAP site. By using virtual desktops instead of an OS on the host machine, the life of the older equipment can be extended for years. The project is described in more detail in a previous posting located here.

The Information Morning piece interviews Dan Robichaud of the Halifax Regional CAP Association and Mike Lovell from tintedGreen Technologies about the project. They discuss the reasoning for the project, performance issues with the system and funding issues that are holding the project from being implemented at additional sites.

Open Source software and its philosphy are an important part of Norex’s way of doing business. They have used many open source packages since starting the business to create solutions for their clients. After working with many of those software packages, Norex felt they could develop one of their own that would better meet their needs and that of their clients.

They created an open source framework named Dashboard. On the Dashboard website, it describes the software as a “Rapid Application Development Framework” and was “designed to make writing PHP faster and more secure by removing the repetitive parts of programming from the development cycle”. The framework incorporates tools for “CMS, eCommerce, blogs & SEO” solutions as well as others. The software is currently at version 2.2.0, is licensed under the GPL V3 and revisions are managed with the GIT system. Setup requires a server with PHP and MySQL present.

With the Dashboard framework in hand, Norex is able to offer services to clients with a higher degree of support and customization without having to rely on a third party such as when using other software. They promote this as one of their keys to offering superior results to its clients over their competition. Also believing in open source, they gladly share and promote the software with the community.

People in the Atlantic provinces with an interest in open source geospatial software are invited to join the Atlantic Canada OSGeo Chapter.

As of June 2010, a new regional chapter of the Open Source Geospatial (OSGeo) Foundation has been formed for the Atlantic provinces. The OSGeo Foundation is a non-profit organization formed to promote and support open source geospatial project development. Geospatial is the term used to describe tools, software and other methods to collect geographic data for map making, topography measurements and other geographic data applications.

The new Atlantic Canada OSGeo chapter has been formed to promote the use of open source geospatial tools in the Atlantic provinces. The group currently has a mailing list and is preparing to have bi-annual meetings with its members. Events such as workshops, lectures and demonstrations are also being planned. People interested in joining the group can visit the page below and join the mailing list.

OSCAR McMaster is an open source electronic medical record (EMR) management and billing system. The software is licensed under GPL V2 and is CMS 2.0 spec. government certified for funding in Ontario. OSCAR was developed at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, with version 1.0 being released in 2002. The system is intended for family doctor practices and medical clinics that do not require large, expensive enterprise grade hospital EMR systems. OSCAR uses a LAMP server, allowing doctors and staff to access records and billings through a web interface on their computer’s browsers, making it client OS netural. For a small practice, the costs of setting up an OSCAR implementation can be exceptionally low compared to other EMR products. An office may only need a PC to act as the server, a consumer grade network switch or router and a few client PCs to implement the setup.

Dr. Robert Coull of the Sherwood Family Medical Center in Charlottown, PEI uses the OSCAR McMaster system to manage the center’s patient records. Dr. Coull also advocates the benefits of OSCAR McMaster on his blog, OSCAR PEI Users. On the blog the doctor highlights how the software can benefit medical practices through better patient record management. He points out in detail in the introduction post the three main advanatages of the software: safety, chronic disease management/prevention and efficiency. He also provides example scenarios that outline the potential investment costs to implementing OSCAR in practices of various sizes.

Dr. Coull also maintains a second blog that shares technical information and tips for using OSCAR McMaster at the OscarPEI Technical Blog. This separate blog is meant for the technical users of OSCAR, such as technicians that would maintain the servers. Dr. Coull uses the blog to discuss items such as server migration, automation of data processes and maintaining security of confidential patient records.

The first annual Islandora Camp takes places this July in Charlottetown, PEI.

The first annual Islandora Camp will take place this year on July 22-23 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Islandora is the open source digital asset management framework system developed at the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI) and the University’s Robertson Library team. Hosted by UPEI, the camp is being held with the goal “to build the Islandora (and of course Drupal and Fedora) ecosystem by assembling interested developers, repository managers and all manner of rogues in a place where the ideas and energy can flow.”

The two day event takes place shortly before another open source related event, the Red Island Repository Institute‘s 3rd annual Fedora Summer Institute conference, scheduled for July 26-30, 2010.

Environmentally minded IT conslutant Mike Lovell, owner of tintedGreen computer consulating, is currently developing a Linux based desktop virtulization “system-in-a-box” code named “greenBox”. He began to think about building the product after his work with the Halifax CAP association when they developed a virtual desktop deployment system together, covered on this blog previously . He is attempting to build a product that is “an all-in-one solution that is cheap, easy to deploy, and environmentally friendly.” The hope is to produce a box that can quickly be installed at a site, such as a school or community internet access site, that can provide virtual desktops across a network without the need for substantial overhead and support. According to his blog, he is currently working with Ubuntu Linux and Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) to develop the software stack for the device. A demo of the unit may be on display this September at the Atlantic Eco-Expo, taking place at the Cunard Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia.